Our Love Is the Cl--!!

Anyone who still believes the emotion has been drained out of pop
music by techno, premillennial postmodernism, and the sad demise of
grunge hasn't been listening to much pop music lately. I mean pop
music, the upper reaches of Billboard's Hot 100 Singles--in other
words, Top 40. Because the consensus the term implies has been
niche-marketed halfway to nowhere, it may seem nostalgic. But according
to Sean Ross of Billboard's Airplay Monitor, we're easing
into one of those eras of good feeling when the same pusillanimous
program director can countenance LeAnn Rimes, Elton John,
Chumbawamba, and the Notorious B.I.G.--as long as it's "Mo Money Mo
Problems" rather than "Somebody's Gotta Die" or the notorious "#!*@
[that's how he renders "Fuckin'," eavesdroppers] You Tonight."
Which latter is (hey, Arsenio! you too, Richard G.!) a parody, like
"Cop Killer," and as such provides a key to pop's renewed
ecumenicism--not because it's so nasty, a distinction it shares
with dozens of hot tracks, but because it's where the macho-identified
Biggie-Puffy team ruefully, risibly, anti-emotionally,
and (despite it all) sexily acknowledge how bleeping many male
singers, copping r&b sound and attitude whether they're black or
white, are now bonding in groups and devoting their art to vows of
romantic bliss.

For as long as there's been pop radio, Top 40 has been fueled
primarily by hooks. Yet though every hit still comes equipped,
these are somewhat recessive at the moment--beyond Puffy's grand
thefts and the new wave novelties bizzers designate alternative,
they've lost brilliance, at least temporarily. And in has gushed a
great river of the emotion that has always been pop's other driving
force. Or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe an increased
demand for emotion has rejected the more energetic forms of hookiness
as extraneous, distracting, somehow trivializing--perhaps even, well, boy.

Although sexual revolution on the charts has been a truism
ever since Alanis and Gwen and Celine went mega (with Fiona and
Jewel to follow), singles, ceded in theory to female adolescents
ever since AOR slotted young males into album consumption, have
never been more girl-directed than in 1997. Today's female
hitmakers include such sisterly paragons as Sarah McLachlan and
Shawn Colvin; even guy-friendly strokes like Missy Elliott's "Sock
It to Me" and Mary J. Blige's "Everything" and prefab Euroqueens
like the Spice Girls and Robyn pack obvious girl appeal. With
their self-images thus bolstered, girlfans are ready for sincere
male sexuality at a level of carnality and sheer confidence
that boyfans can relate to as well.

This kind of r&b smarm may seem old to cynics who never wanted
to know the difference, if any, between Shai and Silk, Keith Sweat
and Johnny Gill. And indeed, you could trace it to the Chi-Lites and
Blue Magic and the O'Jays, even doowop. But never before has so much
of the stuff
charted at one time. Six months ago the principals were Babyface,
Keith Sweat, Montell Jordan, Mark Morrison, Dru Hill, Az Yet, and
more, and now there are more than that, almost all in groups, about
a dozen in the current Top 40. And as unprecedented as the numbers
is an appeal that is both direct and positive--old-fashioned soul
supplicants are pretty much out of sight. The sweet-macking
production team Somethin' for the People talk shhh with an equally
concupiscent femme chorus; juicy young Usher almost busts his fly
trying to resist the girl he thought was only a friend; songwriter
turned singer Brian McKnight aims a Mase rap and a Puffyized JB
sample at some other guy's girl's pants and/or life; LSG put their
body on her body; and the sexperts of H-Town instruct the fellas
about how "They"--that is, women--"Like It Slow," addressing each
and every one of "them" in the process. Only three of these hits
are in bereft mode, and although that does include two of the
biggest and all of the whitest, the prevailing mood is prowoman
male strength--perhaps, if I may conjecture without implying
unqualified approval, a strength that encourages a broader sexual,
racial, and generational consensus than Pearl Jam, Green Day, or
Raekwon, none of whom crashed so many programmers' gates.

In terms of apparent agency, these acts descend from careerist
bandwagoneers H-Town and LSG (G is for Gill, S for Sweat again, L
for Gerald Levert, son of head O'Jay Eddie L. among other things)
to star-struck backstagers McKnight and Somethin' for the People to
successes Boyz II Men and Dru Hill to hopefuls Next and Milestone
to teen puppets Usher and the Backstreet Boys and 98°. Some will be
memories before most people have ever heard of them, and some who
are destined for better things--notably the the Backstreet Boys,
the Orlando-born Europrinces who have supposedly sold 5 million
copies of their album worldwide without taking it Top 10
stateside--are probably destined for worse shortly thereafter.
Hardly a target of this music, and not that big an emotion fan
anyway, I'm not going to tell you I enjoy any of these records as
much as "Mo Money Mo Problems" or "#!*@ You Tonight." But I will
report that they wield surprising individual authority and
tremendous collective weight. From LSG's soul-man muscle and
Somethin' for the People's postfunk falsetto to the sapling croons
of Usher and the Backstreet Boys, they reaffirm r&b vocal tradition
at the precise moment when the death of church and the rise of rap
were supposed to have starved it out completely. And lies though
they may be, placed all in a row they stretch halfway to the truth.

Exhibit A is the repentant boot-knockas of H-Town, who credit
"a calling from God through Jesus Christ" for Ladies Edition, "one
of the greatest albums to come in history." Certainly it's one of
the strangest, softcore porn like the mack-daddy/do-me-feminist
single about how "it feels so wet when I give my slow motion right
back" cheek by jowl with outspoken wife-abuse protests, a defense
of a "Jezebel," and a list of "natural women" leading up to Selena
and "Nicole Brown." The back lists 20 rape,
violence, and AIDS hotlines. They performed at the Million Woman
March, yes they did.

And over here is Exhibit B, Next's Rated Next, keyed to the
unapologetic "Butta Love," which advances the burgeoning
salaciousness of radio-powered language--"wet" and "hard," "booty"
to "butt" to plain old yummy "ass," "freak" and "flex" and "sex" as
verbs that equal "fuck," the routinization of the electronic fig
leaf that enables Somethin' for the People to entitle their sly
smash "My Love Is the Shhh!" Next's great coup for colloquial
English is to transform a phrase that first appears as "that bomb
shit" ("that bomb shhh" on the CD-single, which leads with the
uncensored version) into the precedent-setting "that bomb clit"
(the single fades out right at the "cl"). So they know what it's
called--do they know how to find it? The answer we're vouchsafed is
"Taste So Good": "I wanna go to the valley/I wanna taste your
lips," they vow, an electronic slurp adding a grace beat. Between
a vile interjection from Naughty by Nature's KayGee and the
unimaginative "Phone Sex," a couple of good tolerant relationship
songs get undercut. But most of the sexy stuff on this sex album is
great.

If Next runs on sex, their shows of heart do add
invaluable sweetness and strength. And since Top 40 is running on
emotion, I bet they pass by the cute young-hardon song "Too Close"
("Feel a little poke comin' through," the girl chorus coos) to go
love-man on the follow, with the progressive "Represent Me" or the
mawkish "I Still Love You." It's OK, too, if neither sounds as
heartfelt as Milestone's Babyface-supplied "I Care 'Bout You" or
even H-Town's testifying I'm-sorry mantra "Woman's Anthem"--"Apologizing
for unequal rights/Apologizing for d-o-g's." Because
all of these men gather credibility from each other, and from
whatever concatenation of market forces, moral reaction, and formal
imperative induces them to respect the women they hope to
manipulate or please God maybe just touch. It's always bad logic
to assume that any pop moment is a pop trend, much less a cultural
formation. But this is an encouraging one.